


Until I Can See You With Me Again

by Neelh



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, so grantaire and enjolras can never be together properly, they are incapable of living and being happy, who knew how much i love alternate universes based on mcr so much?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2013-10-25
Packaged: 2017-12-30 11:18:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1017980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neelh/pseuds/Neelh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras and Grantaire can't seem to find the right time to be born.</p><p>It would be funny, if it weren't so sad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until I Can See You With Me Again

**Author's Note:**

> There are a couple of on-screen deaths, so if that sort of thing triggers you or freaks you out, then this probably isn't worth the read. Sorry. ._.
> 
> Based on a prompt by azanerth/pyladesslightlytipsy.

The first time, Enjolras is a revolutionary and Grantaire is cynical, drunk, and his complete opposite in every single way. They are both intelligent young men, but neither can compromise enough to allow their hands to hold each others for longer than it takes to die. Both are convinced that they will meet again in some kind of afterlife, but neither were prepared for something like this.

-

"Hello," the soldier said, nodding at the coachman.

The man raises an eyebrow in reply, though replies with a quick, "Good afternoon."

"Could you drop me off at the port, please?"

"That'll be a centime."

The soldier sits at the front of the carriage, alongside the driver. When he asks why the man didn't sit in the actual carriage, he replies, "There's no room, and anyway, you seem familiar."

"I have a pretty common face amongst many bar brawlers."

"Theirs are not as nice as yours."

"You flatter me." A brief pause. "Why are you going to the port?"

"I'm running. France needs me, but I have a friend in England who needs me even more. He just lost his entire family; I can't abandon him now."

"So you decided to run away from military service, knowing full well the repercussions?"

"I was a pacifist anyway."

The driver stared out at the port they arrived at. "I wish I could go with you."

"So do I."

They never see each other again after that. Even though they both end up with honest, loving wives, they always think about the man of whom they never learnt the name of.

-

Grantaire loved his Uncle Feuilly, mostly because they could both remember things that nobody else could. Uncle Feuilly had friends who were a lot older than him and he learnt a lot from them. Sometimes he took Grantaire to meet them with him.

"This is Enjolras, Grantaire. Enjolras, this is the boy I was telling you about."

The grey-haired man looked up from his book. "Hello, Grantaire. How are you today?"

Another old man gasped half-mockingly. "Could it be? Enjolras isn't giving a death glare to someone he's never met befo-" The man with thin, ridiculously curly grey hair gave an actual gasp this time. "Grantaire?"

"Uh huh! Grand aire!"

"That's him, alright. No wonder he never showed up until now," smiled the man, holding out his arms. Grantaire ran and hugged him.

"Shut up, Courfeyrac."

Grantaire spent his developing years in the lap of an old Enjolras who would gently tell him of the world's injustices and how to save them. When he was fourteen, Enjolras died of old age.

-

Enjolras hadn't known hell until he was living in a concentration camp, knowing that each passing day bought him closer to death. He hadn't wanted to die; he had wanted to make a change in the world before he left it for good. However, the pink triangle on his sleeve may have been a noose.

The boy he had been caught with that one night - neither had really been a man, not at that point, they were only teenagers - had mental problems. Some called it autism, some called it plain stupidity and Nazis called it abhorrent and called for its removal from the gene pool.

Some of the prison guards kicked Enjolras more than others. He was perfect, Aryan, but also completely gay.

He often dreamed of the boy who he loved for a day. When he was so thankfully killed, his hand twitched and he smiled.

-

Racism was too common for Enjolras to be comfortable with and for Grantaire to stand.

Both were not white, but Enjolras had been "blessed" with a white father, who in turn had a decreased social status and was not at all kind to his wife, Enjolras' mother.

They had only married because of his mother's wit and silver tongue; something Enjolras had inherited from her. He could weave just as convincing arguments and, when the occasion called for it, lies.

There was one time that he had lied like hell to get him and Grantaire out of an arrest that would have probably lasted a lot longer than legal for white people and likely be a lot more brutal. Riots were never something he wanted to be joined up in, but Grantaire needed to let off steam and Enjolras wanted to make a change.

"Enjolras," said Grantaire one night. They often slept in the same bed for comfort.

"Grantaire."

"I love you."

"We can't."

"It hurts, though."

"It'll hurt more when they kill us. They hate gays and they hate blacks."

"You're so melodramatic."

After they kissed on the edges on the next riot, Enjolras was, once again, proved correct.

-

Their brief story the next time around began with a fight in a crowded bar after a football match. The lads still drank together and sang off-key, though the worst offenders had been thrown out an hour or so ago. The blonde sat in the corner simply watched the people, only vaguely interested in them.

Enjolras was twenty seven and he didn't see how it started, only that a punch was thrown and dodged, another blow parried and a quick response made. When the black-haired man gained the upper hand against the musclehead opposing him, there was a flash of silver and a spurt of blood.

Paramedics were called but they'd be too late if Enjolras didn't do anything. He applied pressure to the wound, and the man beneath him smiled and tried to laugh before spasming in pain.

"I can't believe I lasted this long," he grinned.

Enjolras looked at him. "What do you mean?"

"I've been pissing people off since the day I was born. I thought I'd have been offed before I graduated. Actually, yeah, I never did. Dropped out at sixt-"

He cut himself off with a grunt of pain.

"Heh." Blood trickled down his cheek. He'd coughed some up at one point. "You're beautiful. Name's Grantaire."

The blonde laughed weakly, incredulously. "Are you hitting on me while you're dying?" He paused for a beat, then continued, "Enjolras."

"You kind of look like an angel," Grantaire slowly stuttered out. With a burst of energy that came from nowhere, he grabbed the hand on his abdomen where the wound was and removed it, lacing his fingers between Enjolras'. On instinct, he smirked sadly with a small, "I'm sorry."

Enjolras never really stopped feeling hollow after that.

-

He is thirteen when he first feels the bullets strike his chest. He wakes up in a blind panic, ripping up every canvas he finds, destroying the careful artwork he created. His parents make him see some kind of specialist after that, and the first appointment is made for a month's time.

"Grantaire," begins the therapist, when they are finally alone.

The boy looks back at him, his mouth hanging open as he finally makes eye contact with the man. "Enjolras?"

"Yes. It's me again."

Grantaire felt like his insides had been filled with creamy hot chocolate with half-melted marshmallows, but also like he could command the air and the earth to bend to his will.

"I'm married," he continues. "I'd ask if it would worry you, but when I lived for thirty years without finding you, I felt as though it would be for the best. We found the rest of them, and we still meet at the Musain. We can move the meeting times forward from eleven, it that helps-"

"No," says Grantaire firmly.

"Oh, I understa-"

"No, you will not move the meeting times forwards, because I sneak out every night anyway. Now give me your fucking phone number."

Les Amis de l'ABC are just as fun and ridiculously kind as before, but Grantaire feels like an outsider. He's twenty years younger than Enjolras and five years younger than Jehan, who used to be the baby of the group. The group didn't let him know it too obviously, but they seemed to be glad that he wasn't drinking to cope, seeing as his family was far too kind for that to have begun. Pretty much nobody had noticed depression creeping up on him. However, as he started being able to pass for older than he was, he wrangled a fake ID and began to destroy his liver at the tender age of fourteen.

"I can't believe you're doing this again!" yelled Enjolras, finally snapping after an argument that had already lasted over an hour. "I just want you to stay away from alcohol so I-"

"I'm sorry that I was born forty years too late!" Grantaire growled in reply. "I'm sorry that I shut the hell up about everything that concerns myself alone. Tell me, Enjolras, did you even give a shit about finding me until you had to psychoanalyse me?"

"Yes, because I managed to find you every single other time! Do you think I've just been sitting around waiting for you to sweep me off my feet?"

"Obviously not! I remember when you denied me everything, every time. 'It's too dangerous,' or 'We'll never meet again,' and did you leave that one time for Combeferre?"

"Wh-"

"Paris, first reincarnation after the barricades."

Enjolras' jaw fell slack.

"Knew it."

He turned away, his sardonic smirk masking his glistening eyes. "Enjolras, I never want to see you again. Just… Stop running into my lives and ruining it, because every single time I grow to believe that we won't see each other and maybe I can live happily for once, but then you burst in and none of my paintings sell because they're all of you from that point onwards, and nobody can flirt with me unless they've got those eyes and those curls and… Just fuck you. I can't do this anymore."

"Gra-"

"Shut it."

The other Amis watched as their resident cynic left the cafe into the rain, trying to fight back tears in vain. Enjolras tried to run after him, but Combeferre caught his arm. Enjolras fell into the caramel-haired man's arms and began to sob. Bossuet and Joly went in his place.

"Fuck, 'Ferre, I love him," he managed to utter eventually. His friends looked on, either good at disguising their shock or knowing all too well. "I keep fucking everything up by timing our rebirths wrong."

Courfeyrac narrowed his eyes. "Timing your rebirths?"

Enjolras swallowed a sob. "I can choose when we're reborn, but not where and in which bodies. This… We… I always end up getting us in the most fucked-up places and times for whatever happens and sometimes I miscalculate everything. I thought that Grantaire could have a life to himself and somehow get us out of this mess because I'd expected to die young again, but apparently I die faster with him."

"Enjolras, you're not making much sense," Feuilly deadpanned.

Before the blonde could reply, Bossuet burst in through the door. "Guys, Grantaire's in hospital. He just tried to kill himself."

The world had stopped spinning and also was moving too fast. Combeferre was driving him, Courfeyrac and Bossuet to the hospital, with Bahorel, Feuilly and Jehan in the other car. Enjolras was in the back while Courfeyrac tried to calm him down from his panic attack.

"Fuck, Enj, breathe!"

He couldn't.

-

Grantaire was attached to so many tubes. Oxygen tubes were in his nose, too big for his narrow, sunken face, and a heart monitor was steadily beeping. He opened his eyes as soon as Enjolras stepped in the room.

"I told you I never wanted to see you again." His tone was emotionless and flat. Enjolras realised then that Grantaire was only just letting feelings he had been stifling for a long time show.

"I know you did. You tried to make certain of it, if I have heard correctly." After a pause, Enjolras exhaled through his nose. "You're not the only one of us who has tried to do that."

Grantaire laughed dryly. "Could it be that Apollo is admitting to weakness?"

"This isn't a joke!" shouted Enjolras. He quietened his voice before continuing. "I discovered that I couldn't live without you. Combeferre found me on the bathroom floor. If he'd found me a minute later, I'd be dead." The man closed his eyes. "I'm pretty sure you'd have preferred it." He took another shaky breath. "I would have."

Grantaire couldn't find it in himself to cry anymore.

"I'm sorry."

Enjolras left.

Grantaire led one of his few Enjolras-free existences.

-

The future is bulletproof.

The aftermath is secondary.

The radio still crackles on as Enjolras pulls on his bright red jacket and ties a black bandana around his mouth. He glances himself over in the mirror; a rare luxury in these parts. Lamarque's revolution isn't the best place to take care with your appearance, but Enjolras doesn't really seem to put effort into looking good. One of the other boys gifted their mirror to the blonde, saying that if anyone could make use of such a useless thing, it was him.

He walked down to the main hall for breakfast, flanked by his best friends. Combeferre's outfit was based more on blues and beiges, while nobody actually understood Courfeyrac's colour scheme. He did, at least, match his partner in crime Jehan, though the other man wore more floral patterns and pastels.

There was a new recruit waiting for them at their table. Though they both had their lower faces hidden, neither needed to see any more than the other's eyes.

"Enjolras."

"Grantaire."

They faced each other, standing up, until Enjolras pulled down his bandana so it settled around his neck. Grantaire mirrored his movement. They took a step towards each other, each smiling shyly.

It would have been a Marius-and-Cosette moment, had they not met in the middle and kissed so passionately, they may as well have set the world on fire.

The fire surrounds them even years later, when they both hold guns and shoot at the surrounding soldiers. Grantaire is smiling beneath his bandana; a genuine grin instead of his usual smirk. He finally believes that a revolution could go well and if it doesn't, he'll go down with it and Enjolras, taking down as many people as possible.

Enjolras had timed this so well.

He took his hand.


End file.
